Options

Options

[Dieter Britz]

I have a brand new emacs installation in my new Kubuntu
system, and I want to change a couple of things, but
can't work out how.

I would like to change the length of the lines to
more characters; and I would like to change the
highlighting colour to yellow instead of white as it is.

How do I do these things, and make them permanent? I can
of course drag the emacs window wider but that has to be
done every time.

Thanks for any help here.
-- 
Dieter Britz

Re: Options

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-01-26, at 13:30, Dieter Britz <dieterhansbritz@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a brand new emacs installation in my new Kubuntu
> system, and I want to change a couple of things, but
> can't work out how.
>
> I would like to change the length of the lines to
> more characters; and I would like to change the
> highlighting colour to yellow instead of white as it is.
>
> How do I do these things, and make them permanent? I can
> of course drag the emacs window wider but that has to be
> done every time.
>
> Thanks for any help here.

Welcome to Emacs!

Try M-x customize.  If you don't know what `M-x' means, try the built-in
tutorial (it's somewhere in the menu and AFAIR on the splash screen -
I have both disabled;-)).

Also, you might want to look at the Emacs Wiki
http://www.emacswiki.org/, the Emacs.SE http://emacs.stackexchange.com/
and (last but not least) the built-in Emacs manual (C-h r).

Also - for starters - Mastering Emacs http://www.masteringemacs.org/
from Mickey Petersen and Sacha Chua's site http://sachachua.com are
valuable resources.

Hth,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: Options

[Rusi]

On Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 12:41:58 AM UTC+5:30, Marcin Borkowski wrote:
> On 2015-01-26, at 13:30, Dieter Britz  wrote:
> 
> > I have a brand new emacs installation in my new Kubuntu
> > system, and I want to change a couple of things, but
> > can't work out how.
> >
> > I would like to change the length of the lines to
> > more characters; and I would like to change the
> > highlighting colour to yellow instead of white as it is.
> >
> > How do I do these things, and make them permanent? I can
> > of course drag the emacs window wider but that has to be
> > done every time.
> >
> > Thanks for any help here.
> 
> Welcome to Emacs!
> 
> Try M-x customize.  If you don't know what `M-x' means, try the built-in
> tutorial (it's somewhere in the menu and AFAIR on the splash screen -
> I have both disabled;-)).
> 
> Also, you might want to look at the Emacs Wiki
> http://www.emacswiki.org/, the Emacs.SE http://emacs.stackexchange.com/
> and (last but not least) the built-in Emacs manual (C-h r).
> 
> Also - for starters - Mastering Emacs http://www.masteringemacs.org/
> from Mickey Petersen and Sacha Chua's site http://sachachua.com are
> valuable resources.

Yeah reading is good.
This is probably useful https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Window-Size-X.html#Window-Size-X

For starters try these experiments
In a shell (after the '$' type:
$ emacs -g 40x30-5+6

Change the -5+6 to +5-6 and all the other 4 combos.
Then change the 40,30 [The x is needed]

To 'permanent-ize' what you what, you will need to
fix your options in one of
1 your emacs startup file
2 ~/.Xresources [see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X_resources ]

In 9 out of 10 cases 1 is the preferred option.
In this case it may be 2
[Unfortunately X is a minefield]

Re: Options

[Robert Thorpe]

Dieter Britz <dieterhansbritz@gmail.com> writes:

> I have a brand new emacs installation in my new Kubuntu
> system, and I want to change a couple of things, but
> can't work out how.
>
> I would like to change the length of the lines to
> more characters; and I would like to change the
> highlighting colour to yellow instead of white as it is.
>
> How do I do these things, and make them permanent? I can
> of course drag the emacs window wider but that has to be
> done every time.

I use the command:
(setq initial-frame-alist '((menu-bar-lines . 1)
			    (top . 5) (left . 300)
			    (width . 80) (height . 39)))

This is pretty-much the same as editing the value 'initial-frame-alist'
using customize.

As Marcin Borkowski mentions X determines the very first placement of
the window.  Emacs only moves the window when it reads the init file.
That means if you use the line above or customize you'll see your Emacs
window move during Emac's startup.  I don't mind that but doing it
through X solves this.

BR,
Robert Thorpe